The February issue of the journal, ‘Pediatrics,’ carries a report from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning parents against sleeping with their babies.  The warning is based on a nationwide study of infant death certificates which identified a quadrupled rise in the number of infants dying from unintentional strangulation or suffocation between 1984 and 2004.  The number of parents sleeping with their babies is also on the rise.

Parents may bring babies to bed with them to make breast feeding more convenient or to increase the parent-child bond.  Other parents sleep with their babies for economic reasons that include no money to buy cribs or bassinets and no other bed or room available.  Whatever the reason, the link between the two has rekindled an old debate.

The dangers of an infant sleeping with an adult, be it in the bed, on the couch, or wherever, arise when a sleeping parent rolls over on top of a baby or when a pillow covers the baby’s face.  In other cases, a baby may become wedged between mattress and wall or bed frame but, in other cases, a blanket gets wrapped during sleep around the infant’s neck.

Experts agree that keeping the baby close does increase the bond between parent and child and does make breast-feeding during the night more convenient.  Instead of putting babies in bed with adults, though, a safer alternative may be to keep the baby in the same room but in its own crib or bed.  Some non-profit organizations offer free cribs to families that cannot afford to buy them.

Although the number of infants strangling or suffocating unintentionally has risen in recent years, along with an increase in the number of parents who sleep with their infants, the CDC does not know exactly why so many babies are dying this way, according to Carrie K. Shapiro-Mendoza, who led the CDC study.  Such deaths were once attributed to SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, but the number of SIDS deaths has declined since the early 1990s, when a nationwide campaign was launched that advocated placing babies on their backs to sleep in environments clear of excessive pillows, blankets, and soft toys.  Investigators also study SIDS cases more thoroughly than ever before, a situation thought to attribute to the decline in SIDS cases.